


powdered pain

by yhighon



Series: hybrid au babey [5]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Abuse, Aftermath of Violence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Realistic Minecraft, Sapnap is a Blaze hybrid, Sapnap-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Self-Harm, quackity has wings, they use them for supplies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:35:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28643799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yhighon/pseuds/yhighon
Summary: He tries to open the door again, to no avail. The pressure plate that he’d so easily walked over when pushed inside is unreachable, blocked off.He pushes at the door with his hands, hitting it until his hands turn purple with bruises.“Let me out!” He yells, but there’s no one to hear him.He hears the sound of an enderman dying, mixed with a very human scream, and he’s suddenly very scared, more than he was before.(Sapnap is a blaze hybrid, used for blaze powder. He gets a new roommate. They plan their escape.)
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Sapnap
Series: hybrid au babey [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077488
Comments: 4
Kudos: 199





	powdered pain

**Author's Note:**

> if you're following the rest of this au, this is basically sapnap's backstory, before he meets dream. all of this takes place right before fire blazing.
> 
> also maybe tw for trafficking? i wasn't totally sure so i wanted to put something here.
> 
> other tws for violence and self-harm (even if sapnap doesn't want to do it he's still doing it to himself so)
> 
> enjoy :)

The first thing he remembers is standing on a platform, multiple pathways leading away from it. There’s something making noise behind him, and he turns to see a purple Nether portal. It reaches for him (he’s drawn to it), and he moves towards it, until someone calls out.

“Hey, kid!” It’s a man, holding a sword in his hand. He keeps coming closer, and he knows he should probably run, but he doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know where he would even manage to run to.

“Hi.” He says, quiet.

“I’m one of the admins on this server. I help run it.” The man says, sheathing his sword as he sees that he’s not going to fight. The man smiles at him.

“Okay.”

“Come on, let’s go to my house. It’s this way.” The man heads down the path, towards the portal. “It’ll be faster to Nether travel.” 

“Nether travel?” 

“Yeah, we have to go through the Nether. Come on.” He follows the man to the portal, watching him step through and disappear. He hesitates a moment before following him, into an odd swirling sensation before stepping onto hard ground, and warm, dry air.

It's better than where he was before. Somehow it feels more right, like this was where he was supposed to be all along.

They walk along in silence until he falls through a hole in the bridge, landing in the lava below.

It’s warm, in the lava. It’s not unpleasant, just hard to swim through. He resurfaces to find the man staring through the hole in alarm, at least until he sees him come up for air.

“Jesus, be more careful.” He laughs. “Hang on.”

Eventually the man makes it to the edge of the lava, and he moves over, and they climb back up to the bridge.

“Watch out for more holes.” The man says, and he does, avoiding a few as they continue to walk.

As they go along the bridge, the man talks about the server, telling him about what goes on and how hard being an admin can be. He just listens in silence, and eventually they come upon another portal, only a few feet away from the bridge. If he were by himself he would’ve missed it. It’s encased in obsidian, and the man pulls out a pickaxe, carving out a hole to let them through.

He follows the man into the portal, and they come out in some sort of building, with long hallways and iron doors. It’s dark, the rooms lit with redstone torches, casting a glow over everything. It isn’t welcoming, at all, and he starts to wonder if he’s made a mistake, trusting someone so soon after appearing here.

“Follow me.” The man says, and he does, down a hallway and around a corner. There’s noise coming from all around them, sounds of endermen and the low moan of a zombie.

“What is this place?” He asks.

The man smiles at him, all traces of his previous kindness evaporating in the light.

“It’s your new home.” He says, pushing him through an iron door. It shuts behind him, and he’s left alone in the dark room, with a bed in the corner and a hopper by the wall.

He tries to open the door again, to no avail. The pressure plate that he’d so easily walked over when pushed inside is unreachable, blocked off.

He pushes at the door with his hands, hitting it until his hands turn purple with bruises. 

“Let me out!” He yells, but there’s no one to hear him.

He hears the sound of an enderman dying, mixed with a very human scream, and he’s suddenly very scared, more than he was before.

A few hours later, someone comes and opens the door. He backs away, before so hellbent on escape, now attempting to evade whoever has come for him.

It’s a woman, wearing gloves and holding a bottle with a dark purple liquid inside of it.

“Glad to see you found your living quarters. Let’s get started.”

They keep him in that room, for most of the time. All they want from him is the blaze powder, and his ability to power furnaces, and they tell him all the time to keep producing, to make more, more, more. Blood coats the bottom of the room, but they’ll eventually send someone in to clean it up, when it gets to be unbearable.

For now, he gets to slip slide around the room in his own blood. He can slightly float above the ground if he tries hard enough, but it’s not worth it. 

He has to keep producing, or they’ll kill him.

_“You can throw this hissy fit all you want.” She drawls, sitting outside on a chair. “We’ll just kill you for the rods.”_

_“I’ll respawn anyway.” He retorts. “It’s why you put this bed here.”_

_“You’re so naive. We have it so that any hybrid has limited respawns. One day, one time, you’ll die, and you’ll never come back.” He goes silent, and she laughs. There’s no warmth to it. “Can’t have too many hybrids running around. There’s always more that we can find, if you’re unwilling.”_

_He doesn’t say anything, watching the blood pool as he takes the blaze powder and lets it fall into the hopper. It sounds like sand as it hits the bottom._

_“Blaze hybrids aren’t hard to come by, either. If you prove to be useless to us, we’ll get rid of you.” She continues, and the sound of her shoes clacking on the floor can be heard as she leaves, walking down the hallway, to go torture someone else._

_He tries much harder after that._

They rarely allow him to leave the room that he lives in, simply shoving food through the doorway every so often, and dropping by to make sure that he hasn’t disappeared. Sometimes they bring new ones by his door, and he watches as they take unsuspecting hybrids down the hallway. The guards walk the hallways, their footsteps echoing among the sounds of pain.

It’s been three years since he’s been outside, even longer since he stood at spawn, trusting a stranger.

The admins’ complaining can be heard all throughout the building when something goes wrong, and it’s easy to see the recurring characters. It’s almost entertainment, after being stuck in the same room for so long.

They’re fond of one of the younger ones, some kid who takes almost any job if you offer him enough money. 

“Yeah, he wears that fuckin mask all the time, like we’re gonna care enough to remember his face anyways. Wears the ugliest green color, too.” One of them says with a laugh.

“I’m pretty sure he’s against us.” Another chimes in. “He just likes our money. He came recommended from one of those idiots.” 

“Well, it obviously doesn’t matter, if he’s still our bitch.” The first one says, and that’s all he can catch as they continue down the hallway, headed towards where they keep the livestock.

If they’re back already, that means he has about three hours before they show up for the day, to take what he’s managed to produce and yell at him for not having enough.

He takes the knife they’ve left him and brings it down on his arm.

It’s a few months later when he decides he has to escape. Escape has always been a far away goal, an idea that would get him through the day. 

But the admins keep asking for more and more, more that he just doesn’t have. Every bit of blaze powder they manage to take from him is caused by pain, mostly by himself, as the admins are “too busy to deal with him and his kind”. 

Being a living blaze powder farm isn’t in the cards anymore. It would run him to the ground, if the admins didn’t kill him first. 

~~If he didn’t get out of here he might just end it himself.~~

So he started planning. The iron door that led into his room only opened once every few days, when someone came in to give him food. That would be his only time he could get out, the bedrock walls being impossible to break his way through.

He would have to fight his way through whoever came in his way, make it outside, and get to the outskirts of town, before he could even begin to stop. 

He’d have to have a name, first. The admins just called him blaze hybrid, or just a string of numbers that he’d never bothered to remember. He knew enough of them to know when they were referring to him, when they came to hose out his room and would yell at him to get back against the wall.

A name. 

There’s a sign he saw before he was brought here, a sign left by someone who had been gone for a while. Signed by Pandas, it’d said, with items left next to it in a heap. He didn’t think about how Pandas had probably died writing the sign.

Sadnap. Sapnap. That would be it. Sapnap. Easy enough to remember, easy enough to use. 

He started planning his escape with that in mind, trying out the name.

The door opened, and he ran. Pushed past the unaware guard and tore down the hallway, his feet hitting the brick, loud and echoing against the rest of the building. The guard chased after him, but Sapnap was faster, a small teenager who could move quickly.

He moved down the hallway, making a turn and going down another. This building was full of hallways, a maze that people weren’t supposed to be able to get out of. The building itself was far away and out of reach of most of the server, certain portals being the only surefire way to get to it.

The hallway leads to another, and another, and eventually he reaches a door, pushing his way through it and finding a new room, someone standing there. It’s another teenager, maybe the same age, and they make brief eye contact before Sapnap says anything.

“Shh.” He says, igniting and moving closer. The other boy nods, moving away from the flames, back towards the wall. Sapnap moves through the room, muttering a quick apology as he leaves through the other door.

The guard had been left behind, but more people are becoming aware of movement, and there’s the sound of yelling, about closing doors and watching hallways. He moves faster, putting out the fire as he gets to a dark hallway, watching as one of the guards passes by him. 

Silently, he slips to the other side, through a door, and he’s outside. The sun hurts his eyes, after being in the building with artificial light for so long. He gets a look around, seeing a desert to the right, the sun reflecting off of the sand.

He only stops for a moment, but a heavy hand falls on his shoulder. Another grabs his wrist. There’s something sharp being held to his neck, but all Sapnap can focus on is the way the light reflects off of the blade, so different to the redstone torches in the building.

“Sorry, kid.” A man’s voice says. “Can’t be having you freaks running rampant all over the server.”

He’s choking, his blood getting everywhere. His mouth is full of metal, copper. Then it all goes black for a moment.

He wakes up in his old room, facedown on the bed. A respawn.

They’re moving him, to a new room, further into the building. A new respawn location, a new roommate, which is odd but Sapnap doesn’t have the luxury of asking questions. In some weird stroke of deja vu, it’s the other teen he’d threatened, who looks like he’d rather be seeing anyone else.

“Really? It had to be you?” He says, looking Sapnap up and down. 

“I didn’t ask for this.” He says. “I guess all the other roommates were taken.” 

The idiot laughs. “So what are you, anyway? No way that fire is some potion or something.”

“Not even gonna ask my name first?” 

“I would if I cared.” He says, and Sapnap sits back, appraising him. Seems relatively normal, if a little short. 

“You’re an asshole.” Sapnap laughs. 

“Yeah.” He gives in. “What’s your name, since it matters so much to you?”

“Sapnap.” 

“That’s dumb.” He laughs. Sapnap shoots a small fireball at his feet. “Hey!” 

“What’s your name?” Sapnap asks, preparing another one.

“Quackity! Come on man, we can work this out!” He yelps, moving back towards the wall. 

“That's… even worse.” Sapnap laughs, stomping out the fire that was on the floor.

“At least my name isn’t ‘Sapnap’.” He says, pronouncing the name in a poor imitation of Sapnap’s voice. “Why are you even in here? You new or something?” 

“I tried to escape.” Sapnap mutters, sitting down on the bed opposite Quackity’s. It dips under his weight, and he brings his hands up to scrub at his face, trying not to let the disappointment show. “I almost made it, but they caught me.” 

“Oh.” Quackity says. “The admins are pretty ruthless about that kind of thing. I’m surprised they just put you in here, instead of something worse.”

Sapnap thinks back to his old room, his old cell. The blood that spattered every wall, that would stain the floors and his clothes until that particular shade of red (and brown, once it dried) was all he knew. He can’t think of much worse than that.

At least now, he has company, someone to talk to other than himself. More sound than just the sounds of pain, his own labored breathing and the sounds of strangers screaming, dying just a few yards away. Footsteps that passed by every so often. 

“Yeah.” Silence settles over them for a moment.

“So you’re, what, a blaze hybrid or something? With fire like that?” Quackity asks. “They only really keep hybrids over here.” 

“Yeah. What about you?” Quackity looks mostly human, at the very least, although Sapnap himself looks human until he utilizes his abilities. 

“Uh- I’m not really sure, but I have these.” As if out of thin air a set of wings materializes, and Sapnap’s eyes widen.

“Woah.” 

“Yeah. I actually found this building by accident. Just kinda stumbled across it one day.” Quackity says, looking sheepish. “I thought I could come in, steal a few things, and get away.”

Sapnap doesn’t reply, and he continues.

“Obviously, I was discovered. Originally, they just wanted to kill me over and over again, because it was funny and they could. Then one time, I accidentally let loose my wings and they threw me in here. They take feathers sometimes.” He explains, and Sapnap can definitely see those places, feathers missing in chunks. It looks painful, and Sapnap thinks about his own injuries, covered by his shirt. 

At least the guards would throw him healing potions every now and then, making sure he didn’t bleed out on the floor, when he went a little too deep, trying to make their quota for the day. It looked like Quackity had no such luck.

“Yeah, they want blaze powder from me.” Sapnap offers, and Quackity frowns.

“I thought you had to get it from blaze rods.” He says.

“If I get injured it comes easier, and it’s way easier than trying to get the rods when they would only get turned into powder anyways.” Sighing, he pulls up his sleeves, trying to make sure his injuries don’t open.

Quackity’s eyes widen. “Holy shit. They do that to you?”

Sapnap scoffs. “I do it to myself, they’re too busy to do it.” Quackity’s eyes get impossibly wider. “Sometimes they splash me with a healing potion, make sure I don’t bleed out.” 

“That’s fucked up.” 

“Maybe. It’s all I’ve really ever known.” He shrugs.

“There wasn’t anything before?” 

“They created me. I’m artificial, not even naturally spawned. I came into spawn and an admin came and took me here.” He explains. 

“The admins created you?” Quackity repeats, looking like he might throw up.

“Yeah. If I don’t give them blaze powder they just kill me, over and over, and take the rods. They’ve set my respawn so I only have so many times before I just… don’t come back.”

“Holy shit.” Quackity sits down on the other bed, retracting his wings back as he does. “That’s- holy shit. I knew the admins were bad but I didn’t know they were that bad. I gotta get out of here.”

“Well, you better have a good fuckin plan.” Sapnap spits, jerking his sleeves back down to his wrists. “Because I just tried, and got caught.” 

“Wait, what did you see when you got out? We can use our shared information.” Quackity perks up, looking hopeful.

Sapnap tells him about the winding hallways that never seem to end, doors that lead to random places. The redstone torches that line the walls, front to back. The desert that’s outside and to the right. 

Quackity, in turn, tells him that the walls only go so far, that the part of the building where they keep hybrids is the biggest part of the building. There are ender chests outside, and Quackity tells him if they can get to those, he can supply them with weapons.

They make the beginnings of a plan, aided by shared information and a new business partnership. 

The plan is solidified over the next few months, with Quackity and Sapnap working together to figure out their escape. 

In the meantime, their usual routines carry on, now with the audience of each other. Quackity tries not to watch as Sapnap continues to slice himself open, wordlessly handing him the bandages he’d asked one of the guards for.

Quackity seems to have it easy, until it happens.

One of the admins opens the door in the middle of the night, demanding feathers. Quackity lets out his wings and claps his hands over his mouth as feathers go flying, his muffled screaming painful to listen to. 

“Shut up.” The admin says, and Quackity nods, pressing his hands tighter to his face and trying to keep quiet. Sapnap looks on, helpless and huddled in the bed, as far into the corner as he can manage. They make brief eye contact, but Sapnap quickly drops his gaze.

In what was probably five minutes but felt like four hours, the admin had filled his bag and left, leaving Quackity shaking on the bed, hands over his mouth. Sapnap waited for the footsteps to retreat down the hallway before moving, slowly approaching Quackity.

“Are you okay?” Sapnap asks, reaching out his hand.

“Do I look fucking okay to you?” Quackity snaps, his voice cracking. Sapnap quickly moves his hand back, mumbling an apology. “Just- no, that was mean. Come here.” 

Sapnap sits down next to him, and Quackity’s head slumps against his shoulder, tears getting his shirt wet. Sapnap says nothing about it, careful to not touch his wings, which are raw from the rough treatment.

They sit in silence, Quackity’s sounds of pain echoing around the room.

“I just- I want to have power, so that they can’t do this to anyone. They create these hybrids so they’re easier to control, but treat them like mobs on a farm.” Quackity says, his hand tightening around Sapnap’s.

“Ouch.” Sapnap says, and Quackity’s grip lessens.

“Sorry. Someone needs to get rid of these admins.” He continues.

“You can’t, they own the server.” Sapnap argues. “They’ll permadeath you before you can even get close.”

“Then I’ll leave, find another server. A better world.” He pushes back, and Sapnap believes it. “You could come with me.” 

“I don’t even know if I can leave the server.” Sapnap says, and Quackity takes his hand away, pushing Sapnap over to his own bed.

“We’ll figure it out. We have to escape first.” 

It’s months later when the opportunity finally presents itself. They’ve been preparing for months on end, biding their time, seeing what they could get away with. The guards are getting used to them making noise, being chaotic. They’ll get halfway down the hallway before someone realizes they’ve escaped.

“Can I get some bandages, please?” Quackity asks the guard. Sapnap is pretending to be bleeding on the other side, clutching his forearm in his other hand.

The guard comes to the door, and Quackity pulls him in, pushing him in front of Sapnap, who ignites. 

“Go ahead, kill me.” The guard spits, and Sapnap moves closer, the heat from the flames in his hands making even Quackity step back, moving back towards the door that’s still ajar. The guard maintains eye contact, and Sapnap shoves him towards the bed, before making it out the iron door, pulling Quackity with him.

Their feet step over the pressure plate, closing the door and effectively locking the guard inside. He starts banging on the door and yelling, but they’re already halfway down the hallway, laughing as they turn the corner.

“Come on!” Quackity says, making another turn. Sapnap’s shoes skid on the ground for a second as he quickly turns to follow him, through a hallway he hasn’t been down before. 

But he trusts the other boy, so he keeps in step with him, keeping one hand lit as a makeshift torch, lighting up more than the redstone torches in the hallway. He has to put it out for a moment as they pass by more rooms, and he gets an idea.

“Quackity, let’s set them free.” Sapnap says, looking around at the rest of the hybrids watching them through the gaps in the doors.

“What?”

“It’ll be more of a distraction, it’ll be easier to get away.” And before Quackity can stop him, he starts stepping on pressure plates, opening doors with ease.

It’s instantly chaos. Quackity steps on as many pressure plates as he can, and the sound of iron doors opening floods the hallway, people moving out and into the hallways. 

There are guards moving too, arrows flying as they try to kill as many people as possible. It’s suddenly very loud, too much movement, and Sapnap can’t find Quackity, he doesn’t know this hallway, which way is the way out-

Quackity grabs his hand, and they’re moving again, passing people as Quackity uses his wings to push hybrids out of the way. It’s more effective than pushing through the crowd, and people are running through the hallways, overrunning the guards and forcing their way out.

Setting them free was a fantastic idea. There’s too many people moving around, and the guards are running out of arrows, if their swearing is anything to go by.

Sapnap sends a fireball towards one of them, and laughs as they jump away. He keeps running behind Quackity, who’s pulling him along, laughing like a madman.

“This is fantastic!” He yells, pushing a guard away with his wing.

“This way!” Sapnap says, pulling them down another hallway. There’s a door ahead of them, and the sunlight is coming through, he can see it.

Quackity pulls him to the side at the last moment, into another hallway. Sapnap watches as someone else runs through the door, immediately folding over as they’re shot. 

They go through another door, and there’s nothing. Quackity falls out of the building into air, and pulls Sapnap with him, laughing. 

“Wait-” But he’s already in the air, falling, Quackity’s hand still clutched in his.

They land in water. It burns, his skin on fire, and Sapnap quickly gets out, hiding on the coast as more guards patrol the outside. Quackity watches him flounder for a moment, before seeing the steam come from his body.

“Oh shit, are you okay?” He asks, clambering onto shore. 

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m built for water.” Sapnap says. There’s heat radiating from him, the water evaporating quickly.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize-” Quackity starts, but Sapnap cuts him off.

“It’s all good. We have to get out of here, find town.” He says, but there’s not a whole lot of places to go, with the desert to the right and almost nothing but ocean to the left.

Quackity groans. “We should’ve destroyed our beds before we left.”

“Why?” That seems ridiculous. Of all things, they should’ve destroyed the beds? The original plan was to find an ender chest, but it had changed course in the middle, and they had ended up launching themselves through a door that led nowhere, into open air.

Either way, they were outside, so Sapnap couldn’t be too upset. He wouldn’t let himself get distracted again, so easily captured last time.

“If we don’t have a bed set, we can just die and automatically get sent to spawn, which is much closer to town.” Quackity says. “I think someone used to live over here, there might be a bed down here.”

“Live where?” Sapnap asks. There’s nothing but open desert and deep ocean. There aren’t many places to run, or to escape from. Most likely why the building was placed here, away from everywhere else. Easy to snipe from the towers, watch who was approaching.

“Down here.” He’s pointing to the middle of the ocean, to a ravine that Sapnap can barely make out through the water. “We’ll have to go down to the bottom, can you do that?” 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He says, bracing himself for the burning sensation before stepping back into the water. “Let’s go.” 

It would have been smarter to send Quackity first, to make sure this was a necessary trip, to make sure that they wouldn’t drown before getting down there. If they die, they’ll be transported right back to their old room, trapped again so easily.

But neither are willing to stay on the beach while the other goes, exposed and easily killed. So Sapnap wades out into the water, and they swim down, making their way into the ravine. The water drops out once they hit the ground, blocked off by rock.

They breathe in air at the bottom. There’s kelp above them, swaying with the current. Fish swim, oblivious.

There’s a house near the ravine, something made of wood and assorted other blocks, probably made before the building above them. It’s deserted, but sure enough, there’s a bed, sitting in the corner, next to the window.

“Okay, set your respawn.” Quackity says, and they do it together. Then Quackity destroys the bed. “If we die then it should send us back to spawn.”

“You’re sure it won’t send us back to our old room?” 

“Pretty sure.”

“Just pretty sure?” Sapnap says, and Quackity puts his hands on his shoulders.

“If not, we’ll just escape again.” Quackity grins at him, and Sapnap nods.

“Okay. Let’s do it.” 

They move out of the house, and climb back up the walls, into the water. It hurts, but it’s nothing close to what happened inside that ugly building, an eyesore on the desert and the ocean.

The air is quickly running out, and Sapnap’s lungs burn, but him and Quackity are in this together, keeping the other held in the water. There’s no way to reach the surface anymore, and he can’t breathe, the water compressing around his lungs.

Quackity’s hands squeeze his, and then they go limp, and Quackity disappears.

Sapnap is alone in the water for a moment, and he’s forced to inhale, water filling his lungs and choking on nothing but more water, the salt burning his eyes. He has a brief moment of panic, a what-if. He’s worried that he’s run out of respawns, that he won’t come back.

It’s awful, and then he wakes up at spawn.

It’s been changed since the last time he was here, the platform that he stood on being higher, with forest surrounding it, instead of just the pathways. The Nether portal that he’d gone through is broken, pieces of obsidian missing from the middle.

Quackity is down from the platform, waving his arms at Sapnap. “Come on!”

He climbs down from the platform, and they run into the woods, through the trees. There’s a mountain a ways away, tall and intimidating, but they run towards town, away from spawn.

“Where are we going?” Sapnap asks, and there’s only a few looks from passersby at the two.

“I’m getting off this fucking server. Are you coming with me?” Quackity says, and they’re going towards the blocked off area, the one that holds the void to other servers.

“I- I can’t.” He says, backing up. Their hands break apart, and they stare at each other, making eye contact.

“I can’t stay here.” Quackity says. Sapnap nods. “Just- okay, listen, just don’t- reveal yourself, okay? Cut your hair, alter your appearance a little bit, and just don’t tell people you’re a hybrid. That’s how they’ll find you.” 

He nods again, and Quackity is gone, like he was never standing in front of him at all. Sapnap can feel his throat burning, his eyes watering. He can’t cry, not here. He has to find somewhere to hole up for a while, because the admins will be out looking. He can only hope that they’ll be preoccupied with how many of them escaped.

The next few weeks pass slowly. He hides out in the forest most of the time, keeping an eye on spawn. It’s the only time he can allow himself to use his fire, to warm up in the cold. The fire becomes his constant, set every night and providing him some comfort.

He cuts his hair, finds new clothes. Tries to blend in when he’s in town.

He tries not to wonder about Quackity, but can’t help himself, hoping that he made it to another server okay. He misses him, but being alone is something he’s used to, and he makes it along okay, taking what he can steal.

Burning down houses is something he starts by accident. A fire set a little too close, a spark that flies away in the wind.

It’s much easier to loot when most things are turning to ash and no one will go inside. The heat doesn’t affect him, and he quickly loots chests, taking what he can before getting out of there. There’s no one the wiser, as people come back to burned down residences. 

There are so many griefers on this server anyways, so people chalk it up to that and carry on.

Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time until he burns the wrong house.

At first, it looks like an easy target. There’s only one person standing outside, a kid who looks like he would fall over if the wind blew too hard. He has a stone sword clutched in his right hand, his grip too tight around it.

If it’s just the kid, this should be easy enough. 

Green outfit, mask covering his face. Sapnap can’t figure out why it feels familiar.

But that doesn’t matter, because he has other problems. He’d run out of food two days ago, and had almost nothing to fight or hunt with, or the know-how to go about it.

This is one of his only chances.

So he climbs onto the roof with ease, holding the flint and steel in his hands. He doesn’t need it, but if he’s discovered, it will be less suspicious as to how he started the fire. He absolutely can’t be exposed, if he doesn’t want to go back to the admins.

He hears what sounds like footsteps, but ignores it as he starts the flames, smoke beginning to curl away from it.

Sapnap nearly falls off the roof when someone breaks the silence.

“What are you doing?” It's the kid from before, who was previously standing in front of the house.

He’s holding a stone sword, making this a fight that Sapnap is probably going to lose, but he doesn’t care, pulling out his knife anyways. The threat of violence usually works, something Sapnap has used liberally.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Sapnap retorts, holding the knife out in front of him.

“Come on, man, don’t do that.” He says, and Sapnap can practically hear the annoyance in his voice.

“Eat the rich.” He cracks, grinning. That phrase has been something that he’d picked up from people who were around, usually talking about the admins. It usually works, getting people to agree with him or at the very least take pity on him.

“Yeah, yeah, eat the rich, but you couldn’t burn down any other house?” The guy puts out the fire, and Sapnap notes the absence of heat with disappointment.

“Admins are too powerful, I won’t get away with it.” He pouts, a not quite lie, true enough. He gets hit with the sword for his efforts. “Hey!”

“You’re not gonna get away with it here, either.” He gets hit again, drawing blood. The kid is completely unfazed, looking bored as he hits him.

“Who’s gonna stop me?” Sapnap says, holding out the knife in front of him. The guy almost laughs, bringing the sword down on top of him.

He wakes up at spawn, and scrambles to get to the forest before he’s spotted.

It hits him a few hours later, why he seemed so familiar. Surely that wasn’t the kid the admins used to talk about? Sapnap mulls it over for a while before he decides that yes, it has to be. Not a lot of masked people running around this server, with no laws to stop them and take their faces into account.

 _I’m pretty sure he’s against us_ , the admin had said. 

It’s a chance at an ally, if he can find him again. 

Sapnap wipes his blood off his face before moving back to town, determined to find him again. Allies are hard to come by, but Sapnap needs them, if he’s gonna continue to hide from the admins. Close calls have already happened, with unsuspecting admins showing up in the woods and almost spotting him purely by accident.

He can’t let the chance at a powerful ally slip through his fingers.

With that in mind, he goes to find the kid again. It shouldn’t be too hard, if he’s always around to do work for the admins.

Several hours later, soaked in blood and his hands covered in bruises, he can’t find it in himself to regret it. (The admins will have a harder time taking him in with someone like _that_ on his side.)

**Author's Note:**

> me, writing something normal: hmmm idk what to write  
> me, writing traumaTM: haha 5k words
> 
> but yeah. hope you enjoyed. if you want the explanation to the last line, check out another fic in the series, fire blazing lmao, thats the rest of it
> 
> have a good day/night, don't get captured by admins on an anarchy server and used as a walking mob farm <33


End file.
